


maybe we got lost in translation

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead, because thankfully in this world magic doesn’t exist, he sits in a lumpy seat in the cinema down the street from their house and thinks about what it would be like if someone took their story, the Pevensies in Narnia, and brought it to the big screen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe we got lost in translation

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from all too well by taylor swift. sometimes you just have to use that one line you sing to yourself with clenched fists and covet forever as a title. you have to give yourself that. this talks about all three films and a lot about WWII and how it all fits together. it's an au, mostly.
> 
> disclaimer: i don't own anything to do with narnia or cs lewis

 

Going to the cinema while the war with the Germans continues means that each picture begins with a newsreel that tells loud violent stories about what’s happening across the English Channel: the bombings in cities; the death toll rising day by day in extraordinary, shocking, amounts; the new planes introduced by the British army that fly low across Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, to drop bombs of their own, causing as much devastation over there as the ones that fall in their homeland.

The newsreels aren’t telling stories; they’re informing the public of very real facts.

Edmund knows all about the difference between well-believed stories and those of fact. If someone was to tell him that they had been a King or Queen of a far off land where animals talk and winter lasts a lifetime he would have thought there was something wrong with their head and that he shouldn’t be talking to them any more. He knows that to everyone else apart from his siblings and a handful more magic isn’t real and it’s not good to go around talking about it, especially in times like these.

That leads him to wonder what it would be like to fight this war with magic as a weapon. What use is tear gas when you could blind the enemy with a sweep of powder; no need for tanks and machine guns when a wand and some spells could do just as much damage and then some. If only one side of the war had the abilities for magic, if only Britain or France or even the USA could do all of these potentially life-saving extraordinary things the war could have been over before it ever really began. But, as is always the case, if one side can do one thing the other side can do it bigger and better and the thought of Hitler with enhanced magic is enough to make Edmund want to jump into the Atlantic.

Instead, because thankfully in this world magic doesn’t exist, he sits in a lumpy seat in the cinema down the street from their house and thinks about what it would be like if someone took their story, the Pevensies in Narnia, and brought it to the big screen.

In a film told of his life there would be a beginning that plunged straight into scenes of war and a tearful goodbye that bled into the wide open countryside because he had a childhood before all of that but his life didn’t really start until the war that tore his family apart. It would lull the audience into a false sense of security as it shows the four Pevensie siblings playing in the big house in the country, safe from the immediate danger of bombs and death, and then it would transport them one and then two and then all four of them together into Narnia, the place where dreams and nightmares collided and Christmas never came all winter. There are more important issues at hand but the lack of Christmas is the thing everyone will focus on.

They would introduce Mr Tumnus and then the White Witch; the Beavers, all of the friends they made and lost throughout their reign. For the marketing posters and the trailer they would make everyone’s loyalty appear ambiguous -- just how evil is the White Witch? Are the Beavers to be trusted? Ambiguity and mystery draw people in, Edmund knows. They have to find out the truth. And there would be Caspian -- here is where there would be a time jump to the next time they arrived in Narnia. The second time Edmund was sixteen and felt so much more mature than the time before. Looking back he probably wasn’t as mature as he thought as he was but don’t all teenagers feel that way. So, the time jump. This is when Caspian will emerge from the forest, a lone savior in a Narnia that’s going to shit. Edmund remembers he had been so unsure at first -- he had been looking at boys and thinking about boys for a few months now and he was almost on his way to accepting it but none of the boys from school had been anything like this boy, this almost-man, who had strode out of the thicket and asked for their help to rescue the throne and restore Narnia to the place it deserved to be. There had been a bout of jealousy when Peter had tried to take over too many times and ended up creating more fights than necessary but then he had gotten over it and realised that he was actually interested in Prince Caspian for more than his abilities on the throne. Although they were important too.

The film will make a big deal about this part. It will turn this part into something out of a romantic comedy where Edmund might trip in front of Caspian because he’s been staring at his face instead of watching where he’s walking or he might walk down to the lake and stare moodily into the water whenever a woman approaches Caspian. And then there will be a kiss that will initially be a disaster and there will be miscommunication and god, Edmund wishes that was far from the truth but it isn’t. There really was miscommunication and stealthy kisses that weren’t talked about for too long until finally just before they leave that second time they admit that they like each other. It’s a happy little moment in amongst everything else.

There are parts of this past that Edmund would prefer not to make the final cut. When an ambassador made a clumsy proposal of marriage towards Susan, got violent at her polite decline, and Edmund, Peter, and Lucy forgot momentarily that they were not at liberty to hold said ambassador up against the wall and threaten him to within an inch of his life -- not while they were on the throne anyway. Or the part where Edmund betrayed his family to the White Witch in exchange for a box of sweets he hadn't been allowed to taste for months. He's not sure how the editors and directors would frame that, if they would try to evoke sympathy from the audience for this naive child or if they would set him up to be the villain who wanted nothing more than to best his family at the cost of everything they had. All these years later, in both lifetimes, Edmund still isn’t entirely what his motives were at that point. He had been ten years old and this magnificent, otherworldly woman had produced Turkish Delight out of thin air in exchange for seemingly harmless information -- he hadn't paused to imagine it could possibly be anything sinister. Edmund thinks he might send a letter to the director, should this film ever be made, and ask him to go easy on young Edmund, he didn’t know what he had been getting himself into, if he had he might have left the sweets.

But back to the love story that will be threaded through the paths of royalty and battles. None of them were ever very good at being discreet. He had had to field constant questions about Peter’s secret trysts, make excuses for Susan’s alliances with princes of lands out-with their reach that gave them no economic benefit, turn a blind eye to Lucy’s relationships with various fauns which he hadn’t even been sure had been legal but he had never looked too far into it instead leaving her to her own devices. But he himself had taken steps to conceal his own affairs as far as he could, which occasionally was not very far at all.

So there would be a love story between a Just King and the present and future King. It would be fraught with controversy, political imbalance, fear for the future of the great nation, and so it would be a story told on the sidelines. There would be flashes of Edmund and Caspian ducking around corners to press hasty kisses to mouths, giggling helplessly into the other’s shoulders because they thought they were being so clever, so careful, up there on the top of the world. There would be a long shot taken from across the ruins of Cair Paravel showing two figures the audience would know to be Edmund and Caspian. Here a slow song would play, the lyrics full of thinly-veiled metaphors about love and the best days of your life, and it would fade away sweetly, sadly, into the bursts of war that burn throughout the time Edmund spent there, because this is a film, this is his life, and there has to be bloody action somewhere to keep the pace moving.

Narnia works in fantastic and cruel ways, dropping Edmund into Caspian's lap and then tearing him away again. Edmund is sure there will be the moment where he and Caspian realised they would never be together forever because doomed love is something people lap up. The third and last time Edmund visits Narnia, the time with Lucy and Eustace, they get a couple of days warning before they know it’s time to leave. When Lucy tells Edmund that she thinks when they reach the end of the stretch of water Aslan will take them home he takes Caspian down to a room deep in the Dawn Treader and leans in and kisses him slowly, his arms winding around his neck so he can pretend he doesn’t have to let go. He remembers that he didn’t feel like crying but that there was something deep inside him that felt heavy and sad, a weight that stayed him for a long time after he returned to England. But this kiss, God would the audience love it. Caspian had walked Edmund back against the wall and kissed him desperately, whispering Edmund’s name every time he pulled away. That hadn’t been their last kiss but it had had a sense of goodbye that the final hurried one was free of.

The film would come to a thrilling conclusion involving a battle scene with a thousand extras and a lot of special effects. There would be a life hanging in the balance, a moment of uncertainty to remind the audience that not everyone survives. But it would end with the four Pevensies back in London because that might not be the way it happened in real life, with Susan over in America and Peter away to war, but this is Edmund’s film and if he wants them to stay together for a little while longer in the city that doesn’t feel so much like home anymore but is still theirs then he’s giving them it. They’ve had enough growing up, both in Narnia where they ruled as Kings and Queens and in London where the war forced them to give up so much, and Edmund thinks he’d like to argue with Peter over stupid things and try and beat Susan at chess for a little while longer.

The war will end, the country will struggle to put itself back together but it’ll get there eventually. The four Pevensie siblings will sit in Lucy’s room in their old house in London, all but one moved out into their own homes, and they will talk about the reparations following the war with the White Witch and how it compares to what they’re experiencing now. Susan will roll her eyes when Peter says he thinks he could have been of use in the war council and Lucy will giggle into Edmund’s shoulder when their older siblings start a pillow fight over wars fought thousands of years ago.

Things go back to normal but they don’t forget.

He misses Caspian. He hates that he’ll never know what happened to him, how different time passes in Narnia, and that by the time Edmund turns twenty Caspian could have aged a week or sixty years. He hates that he’s going to have to try and move on from this first love who isn’t even from this world. It’s already hard enough being gay in London in the 40s, he finds it slightly unfair he has this added to it as well. But he’ll find someone in a couple of years, a boy who makes him laugh and takes him to secret little bars where everyone is like them. Edmund will smile against his mouth when he kisses this new boy because he’s blond and cocky and sweet and he feels very similar to a Prince from another land but he lets that go and focuses on the boy at hand and how he thinks he can see a future with him. It won’t be a future made of thrones and sword-fights and talking lions but it will be interesting enough nonetheless.

The credits will roll and people will walk out of the theatre, blinking in the sharp sunlight, saying that the film about the land through the wardrobe was certainly a lot better than they expected, yes, they really enjoyed it actually. It’s a sleeper hit and it’s not until a few years later that someone recognises Edmund on the street and asks if any of it was true, it couldn’t possibly have been, was it. Edmund loves these moments. He shrugs and says that’s for the audience to decide although if you ask him there’s really no harm in checking your upstairs wardrobe, you never know what you might find there.

Edmund found everything.

  
  



End file.
